Voters Have Blown Up the Firewall

Born in 1967, Rödder studied history and German literature in Bonn and Tübingen and has been professor of modern history at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz since 2005. He sits on the board of the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation and is president of the Stresemann Society.

Together with former CDU Family Minister Kristina Schröder and others, he founded R21 in 2021, a think tank promoting a new form of center-right politics. In September 2024, he published Der verlorene Frieden. Vom Fall der Mauer zum neuen Ost-West-Konflikt (The Lost Peace: From the Fall of the Berlin Wall to the New East-West Conflict).

Professor Rödder, after the election you said that voters had “blown up the firewall”. What has this result made impossible that was possible before?

First of all, the established parties need to understand and digest the fact that the firewall is no longer a viable political approach. Over the years, it has become a kind of badge of identity for the established parties. Now they have to learn to deal with the AfD, and therefore with the political landscape as a whole, differently from how they have done so far.

Red lines could play a role precisely in this situation. In substantive and conceptual terms, they are independent of how strong any given party is. And they apply to the right just as they do to the left. Fundamentally, this is about the self-determination of center-right politics. You define your own politics by substance instead of excluding other parties wholesale.

A Party in Search of Its Place

The CDU won only about 17.5% in Saxony-Anhalt and is polling at around 19% nationally. Is it in danger of going from a major catch-all party to one confined to permanent minority status? What is the CDU’s place in German society now?

At the moment, the CDU does not really have a clear place of its own. Rather, there is a range of possibilities between irrelevance and a resurgence. That could mean anything between 5% and 35%. I consider both possible.

What matters is whether the Union can rediscover its political core. Voters have generally become more volatile. But winning majorities for a conservative reform agenda grounded in the Christian understanding of the human person is a task of political leadership.

Would that be possible?

Such majorities are not simply there waiting to be found, with politicians then carrying out whatever the polls dictate. You have to fight for those majorities and make the case for your own positions. That is precisely what is often misunderstood when politics does little more than follow opinion polls.

What would the core of such a renewed CDU have to be?

First and foremost, Germany’s competitiveness and future viability must be secured through consistent reforms. That includes economic reforms and putting the social security systems on a sustainable footing.

Then Germany needs a reversal of the current energy transition, in other words, a fundamentally new energy policy with an explicit return to nuclear power. And fourth, we need a new push on education.

These measures are urgently needed now, but they also form part of the Christian Democratic, center-right liberal and liberal-conservative worldview in the longer term.

Could the CDU actually win back AfD voters with such a program?

When I look at the AfD’s election platform in Saxony-Anhalt, I find quite a lot of the old CDU in it. In any case, I refuse to believe that 44% of voters in Saxony-Anhalt or 30% nationally are Nazis.

Based on everything we know about AfD voters, many of them are people who are disappointed with the established parties. By returning to the core values of Christian Democracy and a liberal civic society while reinterpreting them for the present, I therefore believe that significant numbers of these voters can be won back.

The CDU likes to quote Konrad Adenauer. What it actually takes above all is courage. But a second thing is just as important: credibility.

Competing for the Right

Franz Josef Strauß, the long-time leader of the CSU, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, wanted to ensure that no democratically legitimate party emerged to the right of the Union. That world no longer exists. What does it mean for the CDU to have to live permanently with a strong party to its right?

It will have to live with that now. I think the right way to deal with the AfD is to draw clear distinctions from it without excluding it. The CDU has to engage in an assertive debate on substance with the AfD. That also means taking a nuanced view of its positions rather than making blanket claims that the AfD wants to carry out ethnic cleansing, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz did today in the German Bundestag.

Above all, the CDU has to accept the contest for dominance on the political right. It has not done that until now. It tried to avoid that contest through the firewall.

But that is precisely what will be the decisive contest of the coming years. In Italy, Giorgia Meloni has now won it. In Germany, if the CDU continues as it is, it is in the process of losing it. The Union is, however, still in a position to compete. After all, there are clear differences between the programs of the Union and the AfD. Instead of constantly shouting “firewall” while foaming at the mouth, the Union should compete assertively on policy.

What might such a political contest look like in practice?

Take immigration. I want to have this debate both with the AfD and with the Left. On the one hand, as someone on the democratic center-right and as a Christian Democrat, I say: I want migrants who are legally required to leave Germany to actually do so, and I want that to happen reliably. That is a position on which there is agreement with the AfD and a great deal of disagreement with the political left.

At the same time, I want to talk to the AfD about whether, for example, my friend Ahmad Mansour [a German-Israeli psychologist and author of Arab-Palestinian origin, known for his criticism of political Islam – Ed.] should be considered German. When I look at the AfD’s election platform in Saxony-Anhalt and at certain positions within the party, there are views within the party that someone like Mansour may be a nice guy but should not be considered German.

By contrast, as someone on the democratic center-right and as a Christian Democrat, I say: I want migrants who come to Germany legally to integrate and to be able to succeed in Germany. I also want them to be able to become Germans. Integrated migrants of the first, second or third generation must be seen as a completely normal part of German society.

But the AfD does not want that.

That is a significant difference from the AfD, insofar as it rejects such immigration in principle. But it is also a difference from parts of the political left that have major problems with both the concept and the expectation of integration.

An example like this shows how center-right politics can assert its own position and distinguish itself through reasoned argument without excluding others.

That also means speaking to one another with respect. When I talk to AfD representatives, I can discuss their arguments respectfully and, where necessary, firmly reject them. The reverse applies just as much. This mutual contempt, “the AfD” on one side and “the old parties” on the other, only drives the escalation ever further.

When Political Conflict Becomes Personal

Are we not now seeing exactly the opposite of the old culture of parliamentary debate? In the past, figures such as Franz Josef Strauß, the long-time CSU leader, and Herbert Wehner, the long-serving leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag, could be extraordinarily fierce on substance while still respecting each other personally. Today, personal hostility seems to be growing as substantive debate withers.

You can see that very clearly in statements by Friedrich Merz. Accusing the AfD wholesale of ethnic cleansing is quite obviously an argument tacked on after the debate has already become personal. That is overly simplistic and fails to do justice to the gravity of the situation and what it demands.

The debate has to be about substance. You can say to the AfD, for example: some of your answers are reminiscent of the CDU of the 1980s. But answers from the 1980s cannot solve the problems of the 2020s. Then you have to explain why. That is precisely what matters: the substance.

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The Union’s Strategic Trap

Given the situation in eastern Germany and the insistence of large parts of the western German CDU on maintaining the firewall, is the Union now facing a test that could tear it apart?

By adopting the firewall, the Union first of all made itself strategically unable to maneuver. At the same time, it is indeed facing a test that could tear it apart.

In Saxony-Anhalt, the party appears capable, even after its disastrous defeat, of tearing itself apart further. More generally, this applies to the Union: if it continues moving left in order to distance itself from the AfD, the erosion on its right will continue.

If, on the other hand, it relaxes the firewall against the AfD, it risks splitting on the left.

The Union has therefore maneuvered itself into an extraordinarily difficult dilemma.

How does it get out of that dilemma?

By following this principle: “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.”

That, however, requires a willingness to think strategically and sometimes to act outside the categories used until now.

The Chancellor’s Narrowing Options

What should Friedrich Merz do now? Can simply continuing to govern still get the Union out of this situation?

I see three basic scenarios. The first would be a change of chancellor. The Union unquestionably has a problem with Friedrich Merz. But its problems go far beyond Merz himself. A change of chancellor would therefore not solve the Union’s fundamental problems either.

The second scenario is apparently the one Friedrich Merz is betting on. The idea is to treat the election results as local, isolated events. The federal government carries on, agrees on moderate reforms and hopes to benefit from an improvement in the economy.

This is a defensible scenario. Whether it is likely to succeed cannot be said with certainty. There are, however, considerable doubts.

The great unknown here is the SPD. It is by no means certain that it is even prepared to support a course of further reform. Much suggests instead that the SPD, whether under its current or a future leadership, could work against further reforms. Even now, this coalition brings together parties that do not really belong together.

The third possibility would be for Friedrich Merz to go on the offensive. Before the Saxony-Anhalt election, he himself said that the government needed clarity about its course. That clarity could consist of returning to what he originally set out to do: bring about a genuine change of policy and pursue a consistent reform agenda.

Would that mean the end of the coalition?

Not necessarily. But pursuing such a policy would indeed mean being prepared, if necessary, to accept the collapse of the coalition, then potentially govern as a minority administration with shifting majorities and, in the most extreme case, even risk an early election.

That would require strategy and the courage to take risks. The result would be a government with a vision and a program, one that fights for something and could thereby regain political significance. It would probably be Friedrich Merz’s only chance to give his government historic significance.

One objection would be that, based on current polls, an early election could be catastrophic for the CDU. Is the risk not too great?

That question reflects a widespread misunderstanding of opinion polls. Opinion polls capture public opinion about the status quo as it stands today. But they cannot predict how people would respond to a changed political situation. Poll numbers are not fixed.

A major misunderstanding of politics is to believe that it merely has to mirror needs as measured by opinion polls. Politics, rather, means pursuing what you have identified as necessary, making the case for it and winning majorities for it.

If this government simply carries on as it is and only reacts, there is a great danger that it will continue to lose support. But no opinion poll can tell us how voters would respond if the federal government actually pursued a consistent reform agenda and was even prepared to risk a break with the SPD to do so. That would be politics.

Are there examples of this working?

That is how Helmut Kohl won the 1983 federal election.

Such a course would be risky. But it would be strategy and politics in the true sense of the words. And the historical significance of a chancellorship does not, after all, depend on how long it lasts.